Coffee talks
Friday 20/09/2024 @ 11:30, Sala riunioni quarto piano e on line (meet.google.com/sue-bwvk-axf)
Simone Ieva (INAF-OAR), "The population of near-Earth objects: a threat and a resource"
The Near-Earth Object (NEO) population represents both a potential threat and a useful resource for human civilization, due to the fact that their proximity makes them the most accessible bodies in our Solar System. Their investigation can offer important clues to several key questions (e.g., planetary formation, asteroid/comet transition, delivery of water and organics to the early Earth, emergence of life). Moreover, valued minerals stored inside NEOs have already intrigued private companies, allured by the idea of obtaining resources through asteroid mining. Last but not least, NEOs represent a risk for future human civilization, since some of them can be potential impactors. For all these reasons, several space missions have recently visited several NEOs, among which the JAXA Hayabusa-2 and the NASA OSIRIS-REx mission have returned to Earth a sample of a primitive carbonaceous NEO. The NASA DART, with onboard the Italian LICIACube cubesat has characterized the binary NEO system (65803) Didymos, with DART being the first successful human attempt to deflect a NEO. In 2025, the JAXA Destiny+ mission will leave to visit the active NEO and meteoroid stream progenitor (3200) Phaethon. I will present the state of the art on this very crucial and often misunderstood NEO population.